KARACHI: A group of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan leaders called on Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal on Friday to ask him to provide the party the “political space” promised by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi recently.

On Oct 18, PM Abbasi had met an MQM delegation in Islamabad and directed the interior minister to look into their complaints and ensure that justice prevailed.

But four days later, MQM-P head Dr Farooq Sattar warned that all party lawmakers would resign from parliament if any of its elected representatives was forced to switch loyalty.

Agenda of meeting focused on development in Karachi, Hyderabad

Against this backdrop, the interior minister reached Karachi and held a meeting with MQM-P leadership at the Sindh Governor House in the presence of Governor Muhammad Zubair on Friday.

MQM sources told Dawn that their delegation asked the interior minister to play his role in “returning” sealed party offices across the province and stop the ongoing raids and arrests of workers, especially in Karachi.

They said that Mr Iqbal was also asked to ensure that no MQM workers went “missing” and every law enforcement agency must show a worker arrested if taken into custody on suspicion of his involvement in criminal activities.

They also raised the issue of what it called inhumane treatment meted out to inmates belonging to the MQM in prisons.

However, an MQM source said that as Mr Iqbal had his own limitations, the party was not very hopeful about resolution of its problems in near future.

He said that the interior minister merely “assured” the delegation that he would talk to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah regarding the issues, including provision of facilities to inmates in accordance with the jail manual.

The source said that in view of his limitations the agenda of the meeting remained focused on development in Karachi and Hyderabad.

An MQM statement said that the meeting decided to speed up efforts for the recovery of “missing persons” as well as taking effective steps to curb incidents of extrajudicial killings.

It said that recommendations were also submitted to produce persons in court following their arrests.

It said that the interior minister was reminded of the situation in prisons and it “was decided that political prisoners will be given facilities as per the jail manual”.

It said that funds for the development projects in Karachi and other Sindh cities would be released in a couple of days.

The meeting was also told that PM Abbasi would soon lay the foundation stone of a public-sector university in Hyderabad.

Another statement issued from the Governor House said that the “city’s development projects, steps for further improvement in law and order, rehabilitation of infrastructure, solid waste management, conducive environment for investment in Karachi were among the matters that came up for discussions during the meeting”.

Mr Iqbal said the federal government was pursuing the vision of uniform development across the country.

However, Karachi had a special significance in terms of the economy of the country, he added.

Dr Sattar was of the view that there were a lot of problems and requested the federal government to pay attention towards those, the statement added.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2017